Organizing Your E-mail

With Eudora

How to ...

Create mailboxes

Transfer messages to a mailbox

Filter your messages

Filter Examples

Filter Options Glossary

Create Mailboxes

To help keep your e-mail organized, you can create mailboxes, and even folders of mailboxes. You might, for example, create a mailbox for each of your courses, projects, or friends. Or you might create a folder for all the special-interest e-mail lists to which you subscribe (with a mailbox inside for each list).

Go to Eudora's Mailbox menu and choose New.
The New Mailbox dialog box opens. Type a name for the mailbox or folder. This name will be listed in the Mailbox and Transfer menus. On Windows, it will also be in the mailbox window on the left.

If you want it to be a mailbox, click OK.

If you want it to be a folder, check the "Make it a folder" box. You'll then need to create at least one mailbox to go inside the folder.

Mailboxes and Memory -- Essential Reading

The amount of computer memory used by Eudora greatly increases with the number of messages in your local In, Out, and Trash mailboxes, and with other mailboxes that are open on the screen. If you allow your In, Out, and Trash mailboxes to get large, you may experience memory problems and system errors with your computer.

Here are the steps you should take:

You should routinely empty your In and Out mailboxes by deleting messages or transferring them to other mailboxes.
Close mailboxes when you are finished reading the mail.
Make sure your Trash mailbox doesn't keep filling up. You can empty it manually in the Special menu. Or you can have Eudora empty it every time you quit. To do this, in Windows, use the Tools menu, select Options, select Miscellaneous. On Macintosh, use the Special menu, select Settings, select Miscellaneous.

Transfer Messages to a Mailbox

Open the mailbox that contains the message you want to transfer. Click once on the message summary to select it. (If the message is already open, skip this step.)
Go to the Transfer menu and choose the mailbox where the message should go. The message will be moved.

Drag-and-Drop Transferring

Instead of using the Transfer menu, you can drag the desired message summary to any mailbox that is open. You can also drag the message to the mailbox window (in Windows, this window is on the left side; on Macintosh, go to the Window menu and choose Mailboxes to open a separate Mailboxes window).

Filter Your Messages

Let Eudora organize your e-mail messages for you, using filters. You might, for example, automatically transfer messages from friends to particular mailboxes, use a color label to make messages from certain people easy to spot, or put suspected junk mail messages in a holding mailbox for later review.

The section belows covers the steps to build or modify a filter. For specific tips on how to create a variety of useful filters, please see our Filter Examples and Glossary of Filtering Terms pages.

Using the "Make Filter" Shortcut

This is the easiest way to create a filter. If you use this method you do not have to use the numbered steps below. Using the steps below gives you more detailed control over the actions of your filter.

Select a message (or several) of the type you want to filter. In Windows, right-click and choose Make Filter. On Macintosh, go to the Special menu and choose Make Filter. Eudora will create a basic filter automatically. If desired, click the Add Details button to open the full Filters window.

Go to the Tools (Windows) or Special (Macintosh) menu and choose Filters.
The Filters window opens. To create a new filter, click the New button at the bottom. (To modify an existing filter, select the desired filter in the box on the left.)

Filters window -- Windows Eudora 5.2 (Macintosh version has different look, but the same items in the same locations)
Under Match, indicate when Eudora should apply the filter. Incoming applies to messages you receive. Outgoing applies to messages you send out after they're sent. Manual applies only when you select message summaries and choose Filter Messages from the Special menu.
Under Header, use the drop-down menu to choose which message header (To, From, etc.) the filter should match.
The next box, shown as Contains by default, is another drop-down menu. "Contains" is usually the best option -- use the Eudora Help menu to find out more about the others.

In the box next to Contains, type what Eudora should look for. For example, to filter messages from Ezra W. End, type Ezra W. End, or better yet, ewe2@cornell.edu (because Ezra might use a full name or a nickname sometimes).
If desired, use the next set of boxes to further limit (or expand) when the filter should be applied. Leave this set to "ignore" if there are no more filtering conditions.
Under Actions, tell Eudora what to do when it finds a message that matches the criteria you have specified. You can choose up to five actions. (You may have to maximize the Filters window to see all five.) A few are described here; use the Eudora Help menu to find out about the others.

Make label: Applies a color label to the message summary. The entire message summary will be the color of the label.

Open: Opens the message automatically.

Transfer to: Moves the message to the mailbox of your choice (you can even choose the Trash, although it's safer to put messages you probably want to throw away into a holding mailbox first, where you can quickly scan them to avoid accidentally throwing away an important message).

Forward to: Allows you to type in an e-mail address, and the message will automatically be sent to that address.

Skip Rest: This prevents Eudora from trying to match a message against any more filters, after it finds this filter.

To create another filter, go back to step 2. When you're finished, close the Filters window. Eudora will prompt you to save the filters. Click Yes or Save.

Last modified: May 24, 2007